Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#681

Post by JohnPrine » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #649

Shivetya wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Cycling is fine until its too cold, too wet, too hot, and oh I am late or I need to carry something else or .. or... or.. seriously all these articles act as if it is a viable solution day in and day out and its far from one. people like cars, buses, and other enclosed transport, all for the same reason. because it can make the weather irrelevant to the trip

Some of my fondest memories are of when the weather was "too" something. Some of them make great stories. But I'm sure you enjoy recounting your tales about how comfortable it was in your little box. I prefer to live and experience the world. I lived day in day out with a bicycle for years. Do you not believe me? Even now, I have a car, but I don't use it every day and I cycle if it's close enough regardless of the w…

I mean you're not wrong but you're not refuting that bike's are less comfortable, just that our lives would be better off with a little less comfort. I agree with you, but I don't think most people would.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#682

Post by jamil7 » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #665

jamil7 wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (They also last at least 10 times longer than bikes, in terms of number of miles... including tires, etc.) What? By what metric?

Miles. Bike tires last 1000-3000 miles. Really good ones, maybe 5000 miles. EXTREMELY good ones 10,000 miles. Car tires last 30,000 to 50,000 miles. Really good ones are 80,000 to 100,000 miles. Similar for the mechanisms.

So an electric car is actually the better choice for the environment because it has bigger tyres?

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#683

Post by blix » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

groaner wrote: post #602

blix wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pre-covid world is kinda over. Density has very clear downsides that have never been more apparent. I don't know how often you do the train + car rental thing, but the friction is much, much higher than driving (especially if you have any sort of gear like you would for skiing). Not everyone wants to be so contricted both in freedom of movement and in living space.

Blaming disease spread on density is kind of a cop out after how we saw the world respond to crisis. Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong, and most Chinese cities are super dense places that, for most of 2020, I would have preferred to be living in compared to the US.

The success of these cities is due to political action that is unpalatable to most in the west. Hong Kong in particular demonstrates what happens when even vestigial western ideals and the necessary political structures for this sort of action mix.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#684

Post by ghodith » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #649

Shivetya wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Cycling is fine until its too cold, too wet, too hot, and oh I am late or I need to carry something else or .. or... or.. seriously all these articles act as if it is a viable solution day in and day out and its far from one. people like cars, buses, and other enclosed transport, all for the same reason. because it can make the weather irrelevant to the trip

Some of my fondest memories are of when the weather was "too" something. Some of them make great stories. But I'm sure you enjoy recounting your tales about how comfortable it was in your little box. I prefer to live and experience the world. I lived day in day out with a bicycle for years. Do you not believe me? Even now, I have a car, but I don't use it every day and I cycle if it's close enough regardless of the w…

What is this? You claim that people are only comfortable in cars because they've learned to be, and then someone responds providing all of the ways that cars are actually more comfortable and your response is "being uncomfortable makes for a great story"?

I mean, sure, you make some good points, but they have nothing to do with the completely valid statement you are responding to. If you're going to completely sidestep their comment, just man up and admit you were wrong before you move on to other arguments supporting your position.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#685

Post by frereubu » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

dfgdghdf wrote: post #280

frereubu wrote: post #203

My sense is that popularising electric bikes has a huge impact in cities because it takes away a lot of the physical effort. The first time you ride an electric bike something clicks in your head, and I've seen it in people from all walks of life. It instantly recalibrates your mental radius for cycling, including things like hills etc. The Netherlands is a favourite reference point for cycling advocates, and justifi…

It is very flat, but it's also quite wet and VERY windy. The Netherlands would not be the best place to cycle if it weren't for the infrastructure that they chose to build.

That's true. A friend went on a cyling trip through the Netherlands thinking it was going to be easy, and his enduring memory of it was the rain...

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#686

Post by SirZimzim » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #664

FpUser wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!" Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you. Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways). I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in som…

Yes and you can say that a helicopter would offer you even more freedom, but does that mean we should build our cities so that everyone has there own helipad? Ironically it probably would take up less space than the infrastructure build for cars. But this is the point made by the OP, essentially for the convenience to jump into your car a couple of times a year and drive to the wilderness without having to walk or ta…

Yes, too many people can't bear making anything they sense to be a sacrifice on their part. The solution is definitely to shift the car ownership economic burden more towards car owners instead of everyone. Giant empty parking lots and huge roads are an insane cost with a terrible maintenance story.

I like to think of it as moving away from a datacenter to cloud based solutions. You don't need to buy all that capacity ahead of time anymore just for those short bursts.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#687

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

blix wrote: post #538

digital-cygnet wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I fully follow "I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it", but I think there are two potential points of disagreement: 1) Living in dense cities is not for everybody, but given that large and (at least pre-covid) growing majority of people in the developed world do choose to live in cities, I think it's safe to say that there is a very sizable demand. For an example of the bene…

The pre-covid world is kinda over. Density has very clear downsides that have never been more apparent. I don't know how often you do the train + car rental thing, but the friction is much, much higher than driving (especially if you have any sort of gear like you would for skiing). Not everyone wants to be so contricted both in freedom of movement and in living space.

The US isn't gonna change much. Don't know about elsewhere.

I was in a supermarket last Friday afternoon, in Michigan, and it was "I don't want to be here" busy for normal times, never mind during a pandemic. There were people with no masks and people going through the motions of having a mask and so on. People are moving on before they should! Another couple of months is likely all it will be.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#688

Post by globular-toast » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

ghodith wrote: post #684

globular-toast wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my fondest memories are of when the weather was "too" something. Some of them make great stories. But I'm sure you enjoy recounting your tales about how comfortable it was in your little box. I prefer to live and experience the world. I lived day in day out with a bicycle for years. Do you not believe me? Even now, I have a car, but I don't use it every day and I cycle if it's close enough regardless of the w…

What is this? You claim that people are only comfortable in cars because they've learned to be, and then someone responds providing all of the ways that cars are actually more comfortable and your response is "being uncomfortable makes for a great story"? I mean, sure, you make some good points, but they have nothing to do with the completely valid statement you are responding to. If you're going to completely sidest…

First of all, there's a difference between being less comfortable and uncomfortable. I said I was never uncomfortable on my bike, I didn't say it was equally as comfortable as every other state of being.

When I used to ride in cars as a child it was incredibly uncomfortable because I got car sickness. When I started to learn to drive it was uncomfortable again because of all these weird controls and the stress. I'm sure many of us would find it uncomfortable merely to be inside a car had we not grown up with them from a very young age. I, and everyone else, learnt to find cars comfortable just as I learnt to find bikes comfortable.

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#689

Post by raisedbyninjas » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #647

Shivetya wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Cycling is fine until its too cold, too wet, too hot, and oh I am late or I need to carry something else or .. or... or.. seriously all these articles act as if it is a viable solution day in and day out and its far from one. people like cars, buses, and other enclosed transport, all for the same reason. because it can make the weather irrelevant to the trip

> Cycling is fine until its too cold, too wet, too hot, and oh I am late or I need to carry something else or .. or... or.. Welcome to life, it's hard, and this will hardly be the worst thing you'll face. I bike year round in Berlin, all you need is a rain coat and waterproof shoes, I'm faster than cars on any trip People in the past, and a lot of people today, still live perfectly fine without cars. We fucked up by…

I think there are a few convenience sacrifices you're neglecting. Not everybody has the luxury of living in such a mild climate as Berlin. In north Texas for a quarter of the year anybody will be a sweaty mess in a few minutes after stepping outside. Berlin has average of freezing temperatures in the winter months. That's not suitable for biking in a raincoat. You're fortunate that your job/school is a brief bike ride away. How does your choice in employment/school change when your spouse needs to commute 30 minutes in the opposite direction. What about children working or attending college? What about multigenerational households? Each person in the home that needs to commute somewhere constrains what they can do, where your family can live or both. Should everybody just waste more of their day with less flexible modes of transportation?

Re: Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

#690

Post by blix » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #589

blix wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pre-covid world is kinda over. Density has very clear downsides that have never been more apparent. I don't know how often you do the train + car rental thing, but the friction is much, much higher than driving (especially if you have any sort of gear like you would for skiing). Not everyone wants to be so contricted both in freedom of movement and in living space.

The friction of owning a car is much, much higher than having to care a few times a year on how to carry your skis or sporting gear on a train and renting a car afterwards. Personal anecdote: I was born, grew up and lived up to my mid-20s in São Paulo, Brazil. It's a city where a car is a basic necessity, much like in the US, public transportation sucks and is spotty, never on time. I owned cars, I loved the friction…

I actually find renting a car offers me significantly less peace of mind, because while I don't care if my own car gets dinged, the rental agencies do. In my experience a weekend car rental costs about 3+ months of upkeep, so for me car ownership is an easy financial decision, even though I mostly walk and bike. I might have a different calculus If I had to pay for a parking spot, but this, along with other premiums for space, I feel is more accurately a cost of high-density living, not car ownership itself.

Some aspects of the pre-COVID world may make a comeback, but hopefully as a society we have realized the omnipresent threat of new diseases is very real. This will impact high-highdensity areas more than low-density areas. It is not just disease spread, but also the policies enacted to limit the spread. My friends in NYC tell me that exorbitant rents for tiny apartments they were forbidden to leave was not particularly enjoyable. Paris seems like an exceptionally bad place to be in 2020/21. Public services are nice when you have access to them and not-so-nice when you are dependent on them and they fail. Often access to services is limited based on economic factors in the best of times, much less in times of stress.